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A review by princess_starr
The Floating Girl by Sujata Massey
2.0
Some backstory here—I picked this up like, seven or eight years ago, on the recommendation of a coworker because I had mentioned that I’m a huge anime fan. And I had managed to find it at the Borders (moment of silence) near my college, bought it, and I tried reading through it a few times before ultimately giving up on it. And then it got regulated to a box of books that was in our garage until my mom unearthed it last summer.
I think that my gut instinct was trying to tell me something, considering that even years later, I had a hard time getting through this book. Not because I’ve been busy at work or that this is book four in the series, but I really just did not like this book at all. And not solely due to the fact that I was yelling at the angle (trust me, I’ll get to that.)
The main issue I have is that I did not like Rei Shimura at all. There’s a difference between sympathetic unlikeable characters and characters that I just want to punch in the face, and Rei falls into the latter category. She manages to put down every female character that she interacts with in some way—her boyfriend’s sister Natsumi’s a bitch; Rika, the intern working at the magazine Rei freelances at, is going to steal an editorial position from everyone else; even Rei remarks how her friend Karen used to be pretty but now she’s fat. Even the minor female characters are treated with derision , because how dare Rei be American.
Which leads me into the other big issue I have about the book: I get that this is a fish out of water story and I’m assuming Rei came to Japan to reconnect with distant family. If she’s been living in Japan for a while, she should have realized that Japanese society is inclusive. Like, the whole thing with Rika: the reason that the Japanese publisher is going to favor her is because Rika is native, she knows what format the publisher wants to take their magazine in, as opposed to the outsiders who do make up the staff. I don’t know if this has been touched on in the earlier books, but it’s still something worth commenting on, instead of treating the characters like they’re horrible, terrible backstabbers.
(Oh, and speaking of outsider characters WOW LET’S TALK ABOUT MARCELLUS SHALL WE? I actually think he was one of the better characters—right up until he explains why he’s sleeping with Natsumi—but then there’s the fact that when we meet him, Marcellus says that he poses as a “rape artist from Los Angeles” at a host/stripper club even though he’s really from Senegal. Nobody corrects him on the pronunciation of the word “rap” even though he can handle Japanese and English fairly well. I just…WOW that is an amazing level of offensive right there.)
And the plotline is just so…completely convoluted. To me, the resolution to the central mystery feels like such an utter copout—that Kunio Takahashi wasn’t really the murderer all along, it was the girlfriend of the victim. By the time everything was resolved, it felt more to me like Rei was chasing after a story that really wasn’t there. And to be fair, I can’t really get on board with finding justice for Nicky Larsen because 1. He’s an asshole, and 2. When we find out how he died and who killed, it just feels like everything has been for naught. The ending of this book is such a lousy pay-off that when the truth was revealed, I was sitting there going, “That’s all? Really? Really?” I don’t know why the yakuza is specifically involved so much, seeing as how there’s barely any contribution to the revelation of the murderer involving them; they just literally show up for no good reason.
It’s the same thing with the heavy involvement with the doushinji scene. While I’ll admit that a murder mystery involving a foreigner involved with a doushinji circle would be interesting, the plot keeps circling back to it rather than letting the events branch out naturally. (It does make sense when we find out who really killed Nicky, but again, that revelation felt forced and out of left field to me.) And even the trappings of anime and manga that peppered the story aren’t very well handled. On the one hand, this was written in 2000, right as anime was becoming mainstream in Western culture. On the other hand, Rei’s comments about anime/manga are incredibly reflective of the time—commenting mostly on the sexual elements, like how she can’t stand seeing another schoolgirl raped. (And it’s immediately mentioned that she’s reading girls’ comics—WHAT THE HELL KIND OF SHOJO MANGA ARE YOU READING? 90% of my manga collection is shojo, and off the top of my head, I can think only three series that used sexual assault as a plot device.
Also, Rei is apparently doing a story on the history of manga, not ONE mention of Osamu Tezuka in 355 pages. I think the best we get is maybe one Astro Boy reference.)
I was actually a lot angrier at the plotting and characterization of the book more than the “YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG, SHUT UP” on anime. (Although, I find it hilarious that I got to the part of “Sailor Moon’s braids!” the day before the Sailor Moon Crystal PV came out. Because yes, Usagi totally has braids. /fangirl tangent) Because I was so bored with everything and I didn’t like any of the characters. (Actually the Marcellus thing pissed me off the most because again that is amazingly offensive.) I really can’t recommend this book, because there’s so much about it that I didn’t like about it, superficial trappings aside.
I think that my gut instinct was trying to tell me something, considering that even years later, I had a hard time getting through this book. Not because I’ve been busy at work or that this is book four in the series, but I really just did not like this book at all. And not solely due to the fact that I was yelling at the angle (trust me, I’ll get to that.)
The main issue I have is that I did not like Rei Shimura at all. There’s a difference between sympathetic unlikeable characters and characters that I just want to punch in the face, and Rei falls into the latter category. She manages to put down every female character that she interacts with in some way—her boyfriend’s sister Natsumi’s a bitch; Rika, the intern working at the magazine Rei freelances at, is going to steal an editorial position from everyone else; even Rei remarks how her friend Karen used to be pretty but now she’s fat. Even the minor female characters are treated with derision , because how dare Rei be American.
Which leads me into the other big issue I have about the book: I get that this is a fish out of water story and I’m assuming Rei came to Japan to reconnect with distant family. If she’s been living in Japan for a while, she should have realized that Japanese society is inclusive. Like, the whole thing with Rika: the reason that the Japanese publisher is going to favor her is because Rika is native, she knows what format the publisher wants to take their magazine in, as opposed to the outsiders who do make up the staff. I don’t know if this has been touched on in the earlier books, but it’s still something worth commenting on, instead of treating the characters like they’re horrible, terrible backstabbers.
(Oh, and speaking of outsider characters WOW LET’S TALK ABOUT MARCELLUS SHALL WE? I actually think he was one of the better characters—right up until he explains why he’s sleeping with Natsumi—but then there’s the fact that when we meet him, Marcellus says that he poses as a “rape artist from Los Angeles” at a host/stripper club even though he’s really from Senegal. Nobody corrects him on the pronunciation of the word “rap” even though he can handle Japanese and English fairly well. I just…WOW that is an amazing level of offensive right there.)
And the plotline is just so…completely convoluted. To me, the resolution to the central mystery feels like such an utter copout—that Kunio Takahashi wasn’t really the murderer all along, it was the girlfriend of the victim. By the time everything was resolved, it felt more to me like Rei was chasing after a story that really wasn’t there. And to be fair, I can’t really get on board with finding justice for Nicky Larsen because 1. He’s an asshole, and 2. When we find out how he died and who killed, it just feels like everything has been for naught. The ending of this book is such a lousy pay-off that when the truth was revealed, I was sitting there going, “That’s all? Really? Really?” I don’t know why the yakuza is specifically involved so much, seeing as how there’s barely any contribution to the revelation of the murderer involving them; they just literally show up for no good reason.
It’s the same thing with the heavy involvement with the doushinji scene. While I’ll admit that a murder mystery involving a foreigner involved with a doushinji circle would be interesting, the plot keeps circling back to it rather than letting the events branch out naturally. (It does make sense when we find out who really killed Nicky, but again, that revelation felt forced and out of left field to me.) And even the trappings of anime and manga that peppered the story aren’t very well handled. On the one hand, this was written in 2000, right as anime was becoming mainstream in Western culture. On the other hand, Rei’s comments about anime/manga are incredibly reflective of the time—commenting mostly on the sexual elements, like how she can’t stand seeing another schoolgirl raped. (And it’s immediately mentioned that she’s reading girls’ comics—WHAT THE HELL KIND OF SHOJO MANGA ARE YOU READING? 90% of my manga collection is shojo, and off the top of my head, I can think only three series that used sexual assault as a plot device.
Also, Rei is apparently doing a story on the history of manga, not ONE mention of Osamu Tezuka in 355 pages. I think the best we get is maybe one Astro Boy reference.)
I was actually a lot angrier at the plotting and characterization of the book more than the “YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG, SHUT UP” on anime. (Although, I find it hilarious that I got to the part of “Sailor Moon’s braids!” the day before the Sailor Moon Crystal PV came out. Because yes, Usagi totally has braids. /fangirl tangent) Because I was so bored with everything and I didn’t like any of the characters. (Actually the Marcellus thing pissed me off the most because again that is amazingly offensive.) I really can’t recommend this book, because there’s so much about it that I didn’t like about it, superficial trappings aside.